The client was rolling out an ecommerce front-office application across 20 countries in APAC, Europe, US and Latin America. Brickendon was called upon to ensure the system was appropriately tested, making certain that the wide geographical spread of the employees did not affect the quality of the software.
The Challenges
- There was only a small daily window for communication between teams in different regions
- Significant capacity restraints as each team still had development work to complete and needed to continue with core Business as Usual enhancements, as well as the rollout
- Poor interaction and coordination between the development and test teams
- Misaligned sprint releases were threatening the timelines of the project as SIT and UAT were delayed
The Brickendon Solution
- To implement Brickendon’s own TCPS (Time Check Point Solution) to moduralise testing so it can be split down and executed in an Agile way
TCPS is a process of defining a list of test checkpoints in a modularised format which can be used to perform an accurate test estimation and execution in a highly Agile fashion. This enables BAs and Developers without testing expertise to quickly review the testing artefacts and ensure good quality test design.
- To increase interaction between the Test, Development and Business Analyst teams and ensure the development team has very clear acceptance criteria before starting the development
- To design a unique agile test execution approach called BEAP (Bucket Execution in Agile Projects) which enabled the project team to successfully combat the critical misaligned sprint issues
BEAP enables the testing to be completely moduralised and executed in buckets. As a result, the testing can be done as soon as each development bucket is ready, meaning that issues can be identified early in the lifecycle of the project, thus avoiding costly fixes at the end of the project.
- To build an end-to-end test pack to ensure good quality integration of all development buckets
- To define various innovative processes in defect, test reporting and test execution-related communications to address the issues associated with teams being spread around the globe
- To implement clear entry and exit criteria methods and an efficient test coverage matrix methodology, simplifying the maintenance and ensuring thoroughness.
- To implement a very efficient retrospective methodology to effectively utilise the lessons learnt
Client Benefits
- High quality of test design
- Critical issues were identified early in the lifecycle, therefore avoiding costly delays later in the project
- Issues caused by misaligned sprint releases were resolved
- The test process was standardised
- Wider test coverage with decreased test execution time
- Efficient and effective interaction between the teams despite a wide geographical spread
